You have 2 more free articles remaining

However, while one of those lots can be simply described – a copy of George Taylor and Andrew Skinner’s Maps of the Roads of Ireland..., published in 1778 – the other was catalogued only as “a collection of mixed books, mostly leather bound, in two boxes”.

Enquiries of the auctioneer as to what this might have contained did not elicit an answer in time for this report.

Travel books included a copy of Wentworth’s ...Description of the Colony of New South Wales of 1819, which made £240.

William Charles Wentworth was the son of the principal surgeon to the colony and later a leading statesman, and his book was the first original work published by an Australian.

An influential publication that was substantially enlarged for a second edition of the following year, it provided much useful statistical, historical and political information on the colony and was instrumental in attracting new immigrants.

Pictured right: Princess Splendor and The Wood-cutter’s Daughter, two titles from a Japanese fairy tale series translated by E. Rothsay Miller and issued in Tokyo in 1889 with illustrations printed in colours on crêpe paper, were part of a lot that sold at £1200 to David Temperley. Still in the original wrappers, they were joined in the lot by an unspecified quantity of similar titles, many on crêpe and published by Hasegawa of Tokyo. Musical Japan by Miss Dulcie Harmony and Ceremonial Japan by Miss Dolly Belle, were among the titles.